[[{“value”:”Members of Massachusetts Drivers United rally at Uber Headquarters in Saugus
By the Editorial Board
Question 3 On the Ballot
Come election day, Massachusetts voters will cast ballots on five initiatives, including Question 3: “Unionization and Collective Bargaining for Transportation Network Drivers Initiative.”
Question 3 is backed primarily by the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAM) and the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), and at first glance it appears as a positive initiative to give desperately needed union rights to Uber and Lyft drivers.
Rideshare drivers are currently among the growing set of workers who are misclassified as independent contractors instead of as employees, despite being the core workforce of the companies which profit from their labor. Under the National Labor Relations Act, which only covers employees, independent contractors lack the right to unionize.
Trump’s NLRB issued a memo confirming that Uber and Lyft drivers were in fact independent contractors in 2019, and Biden’s NLRB has yet to overturn this guidance, leaving app-workers without protections.
Instead of pushing for driver rights within the federal labor relations system, Question 3 attempts to rectify this situation by creating a state-level collective bargaining system for rideshare drivers. The legislation would allow drivers to vote for a collective bargaining representative, with which Uber and Lyft would then have to negotiate over wages and working conditions. The legislation covers only app-workers transporting passengers, leaving out take-out and grocery delivery workers.
Question 3 Is Company Unionism
Despite backing from major unions, the majority of organized labor as well as progressive advocates in the app-worker space do not support Question 3 or the model it is based on.
In fact, the Machinists union’s operations in the rideshare space, under the banner organization Independent Drivers Guild(IDG), have widely been criticized since 2016 (see: NY Times, Labor Notes) as functionally a company union which makes unacceptable compromises in exchange for kid-glove treatment by Uber and Lyft.
The system implemented under Question 3 is company unionism for three basic reasons. First, the model has been spearheaded by an organization, the Machinists, which is funded in its rideshare organization directly by Uber and Lyft; meanwhile, the MA AFL-CIO and most other unions oppose the model (see next section). Second, the basis of this alliance is the Machinist/SEIU camp’s willingness to concede the fight to make drivers employees, instead accepting misclassification and leaving the door open for the expansion of misclassification beyond the app-based transport space. Third, the system as written allows drivers to vote for or against collective bargaining, but does not mandate any driver rights within the “union” once it is recognized. The IDG groups have never been democratically run by drivers, and there is no reason to believe that the Machinists would start now. (See: The American Prospect, Fast Company)
As legal scholar Veena Dubal has pointed out, those skeptical of these reasons should ask themselves: if Question 3 creates a real union, then why aren’t Uber and Lyft spending hundreds of millions to oppose it? Although the June settlement between Uber Lyft/and the AGO required them to suspend support for their own ballot initiatives, it didn’t prohibit them from opposing Question 3.
The whole model is built on misrepresentation and misinformation, and Question 3 contains a new innovation over past attempts: an apparent prohibition on company unions written into the language. This is obviously a pre-emptive attempt to fend off accusations of company unionism, but a careful reading of the actual language does not at all prohibit those, namely the Machinists, who already have secret funding agreements with Uber and Lyft from representing app-workers under the new system.
The Rise of Company Unionism
The Machinists formed the IDG in 2016, taking millions of dollars from Uber as part of an undisclosed five-year contract. Although this partnership was originally conceived as part of a legal settlement, that settlement was tossed out by another judge, and the IDG partnership was formed separately.
The original agreement covered New York City, with Uber authorizing IDG to run reactivation courses for deactivated drivers, with Uber then reinstating those drivers. IDG began expanding around the country, establishing groups in Chicago, Massachusetts, and elsewhere. The initial contract was apparently extended, and Lyft was also brought in as a partner, expanding the company union industry-wide. At one point Lyft was advertising the IDG to Connecticut drivers in the driver app. Can you imagine the CEO of any company promoting the benefits of a real union to workers on a company-wide email?
Since the formation of IDG, the Machinists have lobbied for legislation roughly along the lines of Question 3, including in Massachusetts. Other labor organizations, including the Massachusetts AFL-CIO, initially supported the Machinist model, possibly because they were unaware of its criticism or the funding relationship between the Machinists and Uber. However, organizing by critics of the IDG model, with support from several major unions including UAW, UFCW, and the Teamsters, pushed the national AFL-CIO to block state federations from supporting Machinist-style legislation. The AFL-CIO affiliate New York Taxi Worker Alliance (NYTWA), as well as grassroots driver group Rideshare Drivers United (RDU), have played a consistent role in opposing the Machinists and their model.
The conflict came to a head perhaps most dramatically right here in Massachusetts, although the drama mostly took place out of sight of the press. After previously supporting the Machinists legislation, the MA AFL-CIO drafted and backed new counter-legislation and developed closer ties with the NYTWA-RDU camp. This conflict was personified in the October 2023 election for MA AFL-CIO president, with the local Machinist leader challenging heir-apparent Chrissy Lynch for the top union leadership post in the Commonwealth. Lynch, who had previously served as Secretary-Treasurer and Chief of Staff of the Massachusetts AFL-CIO, won unanimously after the Machinist challenger backed out of the race, but only after it was clear that Lynch would win overwhelmingly.
Of course, Uber and Lyft would prefer no union at all, preferring to deny workers collective bargaining rights entirely and avoid paying millions to IDG. But Uber and Lyft long-ago funded the IDG company union model as a backup in case they were forced to recognize driver rights to some degree.
Now that the Attorney General has (reluctantly) forced Uber and Lyft to provide some basic worker rights to Uber and Lyft drivers, the time has come to activate the company union model in order to stave off genuine union efforts. In fact, the totally unnecessary settlement which the AGO extended to Uber and Lyft, despite being on the verge of winning its case against them, helped to keep the company-union model alive. If the AGO had found drivers to be employees, the whole company union model would have been irrelevant.
The Democrats have, unsurprisingly, enabled Uber and Lyft’s chicanery time and again. From 2014, former Obama campaign manager/ senior advisor David Plouffe led Uber’s initial response to regulatory scrutiny and expansion to new markets. In the Commonwealth, the MA AGO failed to bring a case against Uber and Lyft for misclassification until almost a decade after they began operating in the Commonwealth, and only did so after being pressured by the rideshare movement. The case was never pursued aggressively, and this summer the AGO gave Uber and Lyft a last-minute sweetheart deal which, despite winning some concessions for drivers, fundamentally left Big Gig’s model intact and allowed the company-union model to move forward. Immediately after the settlement was announced, MA AG Andrea Campell immediately endorsed Question 3. Since 2017 Uber’s legal team has been led by Tony West, brother-in-law to Kamala Harris, who previously served in various legal and fundraising roles in the Dukakis and Obama campaigns, the CA Democratic Party, and in the Justice Department during the Clinton and Obama administrations. And the Biden NLRB could have granted Uber and Lyft drivers full NLRA rights with the simple wave of a pen, but over four years has chosen not to.
The AFL-CIO, as a junior partner of the corporate Democrats, has played a less than admirable role. Organized labor was slow to break with company unionism and even more delayed in condemning it. Now most of labor is on the right side, but is not spending basically any resources or political capital to oppose company unionism. The MA AFL-CIO is even now neutral on Question 3, even though it has for more than a year supported an alternative model. But at least the drivers’ movement has won over organized labor ideologically.
Misclassification Is The Neoliberal Dream
The importance of the fight against misclassification cannot be overstated, and is not at all confined to the rideshare or food-delivery sectors. It has long been a dream of the Neoliberal movement, including both its Democratic and Republican wings, to strip worker rights simply by reclassifying workers as independent contractors rather than (and in addition to) directly by eroding employee rights legislatively.
The scheme has its roots in Taft-Hartley, and was largely spearheaded in the taxi industry where cab unions were broken by reclassifying their workforces. It was then expanded to other industries, including when a younger Ted Cruz who helped defend FedEx from a misclassification lawsuit initiated by the Teamsters. Uber and Lyft’s “third way” model, misclassification in general, and even the legalization of company unions received an endorsement this year in Project 2025 (2025 Mandate for Leadership page 590, 599)
The misclassification model, enabled especially by app-based scheduling, has already begun to spread from its initial beachhead in the transportation sector. Hospitals in California have been expanding the use of app-hired “independent contractor” nurses, and an initiative was filed in 2022 to codify the system, although the initiative was later pulled.
This summer the “gig work” misclassification system was enshrined in California by that state’s supreme court, and in Massachusetts by our own AGO. Although the system is currently confined to app-based transport, it is now spreading like a cancer and will erode worker rights in industry after industry. It must be stopped.
Next Steps For App-Worker Power
In spite of Big Gig’s money, the Democrat’s corruption, company unionist’s trickery, and organized labor’s inaction, the grassroots app-worker movement has won considerable, but incomplete, advances for app-based workers.
Now is no time to surrender to those who wish to sell out app-workers, or to leave the door open for further expansion of the Neoliberal misclassification model. But almost certainly Question 3 is going to pass. So what is next for the movement?
First, if a large union like IUE-CWA, UAW, or the Teamsters wanted to, they could hijack the system under Question 3, competing with the Machinists and SEIU at their own game and creating a union which doesn’t deny drivers democratic rights. Such a union could transform the model from a sell-out into a stepping stone, funding the fight to win full worker rights for all misclassified workers. This would take substantial resources and require catching up quickly with the Machinists and SEIU, who have now spent years building out their driver networks. But with several million dollars it is achievable, and actually the first opportunity to see a return on investment for a genuine organizing effort for app-based workers.
But if the company unionists succeed in winning the driver elections, those who support the democratic driver movement could still find opportunities to organize drivers within and against the company unionists. A pressure campaign to grant drivers full membership rights in these unions would transform the fight from company unionism to regular business unionism. This campaign could also be linked to internal campaigns within the Machinists and SEIU to win grassroots membership support in favor of driver rights.
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